


Holding On

by Jamesandthedog



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Depressed Remus Lupin, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), and lots of, band t-shirts, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:01:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27687980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamesandthedog/pseuds/Jamesandthedog
Summary: It's November 1st, 1981, and Remus Lupin looks like shit.How he felt wasn’t fair on James. Or Peter. Or Lily. Or little Harry. But just for today he needed it. He needed to pretend his world hadn’t just shattered around him.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	Holding On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YouBlitheringIdiot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouBlitheringIdiot/gifts).



> Inspired by and gifted for the most talented YouBlitheringIdiot.

Sirius was convicted.

Everything felt light.

Remus was sitting on a kitchen chair wearing nothing but a pair of worn out pyjama pants, rays of morning sunshine illuminating the dust settled on unused surfaces of their kitchen. _His kitchen._ There was a newspaper and a few letters on the table, but the man didn’t seem to care about them, only one of them had been opened.

He was hunched over a mug of tea which hung loosely in his hand as he leaned his elbows on his pyjamas, head hanging downwards. His eyes were closed, and his slumped posture made one wonder when was the last time he’d gotten a good night sleep. By the way his hip bones stuck out, he hadn’t eaten too well either.

It had been months since he’d seen Sirius.

He could still feel the dark-haired man pushing him against the wall in their living room, pain and hurt and anger in his eyes, as if it was yesterday. Sirius had punched the wall right by Remus’ left ear, there was still a mark on the wall.

He could still remember how upset Sirius had been about Marlene and her family. Marlene’s body had been found butchered, hanging on a streetlamp in Muggle London. An example for those who got involved with Muggles, Mudbloods and filth, they had said. The rest of the McKinnons had been left where they’d been murdered, scattered around the various rooms of their family home.

It had been… Horrible. But the worst was, when Remus came back home from another one of his missions two days later, Sirius had blamed him.

.....

“I’m asking you to trust me,” Remus had said that night.

Silence.

“I can’t,” Sirius finally answered. “I can’t, and it’s _killing me._ ”

Remus stared at him, was this what they had become? He could almost feel Sirius’ breath on him, they were so close and yet he felt like he’d never been farther away from the man standing in front of him.

“Right.”

“That’s all you got to say?!”

“Does it matter what I say? I know what you think of me.”

“And what do I think of you?” Sirius said, jutting his chin.

Sirius never said it, not really, not to Remus, but he’d never been one to be able to hide his feelings. When Sirius got mad, he was furious, and when he laughed, he lit up the room. When he was sad, he reached around Remus burying his face into his jumper and sighed so deep, like a wounded dog tail between its legs, it made Remus’ heart ache. When he was insecure or hurting, Sirius acted cold as ice, like nothing could break him. And when he didn’t trust Remus, he could see it in the way Sirius tensed around him, in the way Sirius looked at him as Remus undressed him, like he was playing with fire. Like he was expecting Remus to burn him into ashes.

Remus sighed. He was tired of it, tired of people dying around them, tired of secret Order missions he couldn’t talk about. Tired of accommodating to Sirius’ moods that lately had been nothing but suppressed suspicion, kissing Remus one second and glaring at him the next. Tired of dodging the word that clearly had hung over them for months just because they both were too afraid to talk about it.

“I’m not the traitor, Sirius.” There was softness in his voice.

Remus looked at him, he looked back. Sirius had the most beautiful grey eyes, like one of those Autumn days with mist that was almost rain but not quite. They were cold as steel now. It wasn’t like Sirius to look at him like that.

“Prove it.”

It broke Remus’ heart.

Right there, in their living room where Sirius was still holding on to his collar, his knuckles red from when he’d punched the wall beside Remus. Right there, everything they had, everything they were, broke apart.

“Fuck you, Sirius Black.”

It had gone worse from then.

They hadn’t spoken to each other at the McKinnon funeral, Remus couldn’t look at him. He’d left as soon as he could.

When he got back from the funeral, he had trouble breathing as he stood outside their apartment. Sirius had moved out, which didn’t make sense since the apartment was his, all two-rooms of it. Remus couldn’t even afford the place, but he’d stayed because really, where else could he go? He had nothing. For a moment he was sure he was either going to pass out or die just looking at the building that had once held together his whole life. It was never going to be the same again.

He didn’t pass out or die.

He went home and ran into James in the corridor; the idiot had broken out of hiding to make sure he was fine.

Life moved on.

.....

Now, sitting on a kitchen chair, everything felt light. Like a breeze, oddly weightless. Numb.

Silence after years of fighting. It doesn't feel like winning. It feels empty and alone.

Sirius was convicted, everyone else was gone.

Everyone but Harry.

But they didn’t let him have Harry, Remus had gotten a letter about it first thing in the morning. And honestly, how could they? He was an unemployed werewolf who hadn’t managed to make a proper meal in months, just hadn’t seemed worth the fuss. He had ran for months with the wolves on Dumbledores orders, more savage than a man. He couldn't care for a child.

Remus knew he should’ve felt horrible. He should’ve felt anger. James and Lily had been murdered just hours ago. Peter had been murdered sometime in the small hours by… It didn’t feel real. The world, at least those who hadn’t really known them, celebrated.

But Remus was sitting in Sirius Black’s kitchen, and for the first time in months he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel the terror, the loss, the desperation, the anger. The victory of a war they had been fighting for years. He didn’t feel any of it.

Because it didn’t make sense.

Because Sirius Black didn’t know how to hide his feelings.

Months ago, when Sirius’ fist had punched a mark on the living room wall, it had been a fist of a man devastated by the death of his friend and scared for the rest of them. Scared of trusting, scared for James. Scared for James. It hadn’t been a fist of someone capable of selling out his best friend. The Sirius Remus knew would’ve rather died than betrayed his brother.

Besides, Sirius was _theirs_. Had been since he ran off at sixteen, even before that. Inconceivably irksome mutt, but theirs to the bone. That’s what Sirius had wanted too, to be theirs, to have his own made-up family instead of being part of the Blacks with their ancient values he did not believe in. Sirius used to mutter it against Remus’ pyjama shirt after he’d wake Sirius up from one of his nightmares back in Hogwarts. Remus had believed him then, he still did. After all the Blacks had done to him, it didn’t make sense for Sirius to run back to them, to Voldemort.

And still, at this very moment, Sirius was on his way to Azkaban, convicted for the murder of Peter Pettigrew and twelve muggles. The betrayal isn't weighted in court rooms, and today, Remus can't handle it either.

.....

The tea in Remus’ mug was cold. He drank it anyway and glanced at patterns the tea leaves had formed. They told him nothing.

Remus got up slowly, making sure not to glance at the newspaper with a picture of a screaming man he didn't bear to look at, and walked past the kitchen sink leaving his mug with the other unwashed dishes. He walked back to the bedroom in his worn-out pyjama pants and opened one of the wardrobe doors. After staring at the inside for a moment, he grabbed an old T-shirt.

He leered at the Queens picture printed on it, then threw it on the floor.

Remus kept staring at the T-shirt, but it didn’t argue with him, just lay on the floor. He found the silence frustrated him.

Remus scratched his temple, sighed and finally picked up the shirt squeezing it in his fists. It was soft. It still smelled like his Sirius, the one whose every mood and quirk Remus had learned to know and love. He wondered if Sirius still smelled the same, or if his smell had changed the way everything else had – Remus couldn’t quite wrap his head around finishing that thought.

It was like there were two different men, one he had loved and one they talked about on the news. The one he still loved.

Remus gathered as many clothes from Sirius’ wardrobe as he could and threw them on the bed behind him. There were a lot of them since Sirius had never bothered to come pick them up, not even when Remus had been out on a mission.

God damn missions. It all felt so unimportant now. He had worked for months for nothing, lost so much for nothing.

Remus didn’t stop before the wardrobe was empty and Sirius’ clothes covered half the bed. He stared at the sight for a bit, then walked on the other side of the bed taking a small bottle of liquid from his nightstand and drinking a few too many sips before placing the bottle back. When he was done with the potion, Remus crawled on his side of the bed and under the covers, pulling a pile of Sirius’ T-shirts against his heart.

He lay there on his side, hidden from the world, eyes shut and knees drawn up to his abdomen, head bowed and hands hugging the only thing he had left of the man he thought he had known. He could still smell Sirius in there, in his little world under the blankets where everything wasn’t full of shit.

It wasn’t fair on James. Or Peter. Or Lily. Or little Harry. But just for today he needed it.

He needed to pretend his world hadn’t just shattered around him. That Sirius was still theirs, still his. That he could hold Sirius for one more time like he’d used to back when Sirius still looked at him with Autumn mist and love in his eyes instead of ice, anger and doubt.

He could deal with the world tomorrow.

The feelings. The loss. The betrayal.

He would make sense of it all tomorrow. He would remember Sirius had been trying to figure out what happened to his little brother, the one who seemed to have disappeared a few years back, yet all of the Blacks refused to tell Sirius anything about it. Remus figured maybe somewhere along that road to finding out the truth, Sirius had turned the wrong way, got caught up in something bigger than he was able to handle. Maybe he had even found Regulus. Because Remus knew Sirius would’ve rather died than betrayed James, but he would’ve died for Regulus too. Maybe he had betrayed them for Regulus too.

Remus sighed and buried his face in the clothes letting the familiar smell lull him into a dreamless sleep.

.....

Minerva McGonagall found him the next day. She was standing at the doorway, looking at the mess that was Remus Lupin covered in various band shirts and ripped black jeans, and she didn’t have the words.

**Author's Note:**

> Eventually, I like to think he did go fight for Harry's guardianship.


End file.
